


Dead/Alive in a Box

by toastburs



Category: DreamSMP, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alivebur, Other, Vilbur, anyway, c!Wilbur Soot - Freeform, i would like to talk about how the SMP fits hamlet / ros and guil are dead, my writing is just one big homage to shakespeare, revivebur
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 06:48:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29962536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toastburs/pseuds/toastburs
Summary: Do you ever think of yourself as actually dead, lying in a box with the lid on it? Wilbur does. In fact, he doesn't just think of himself as this, he IS this. After his resurrection, Wilbur spawns at the rubble of old L'Manberg -- HIS L'Manberg. Whatever poor soul happens to walk past is greeted with the shell of this former Present, exiled, dead... Alive? Inspired by a tweet made by one of my friends and I had to write it because that's how I am. Introspective again!
Relationships: n/a
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	Dead/Alive in a Box

The streets are strikingly more different than Wilbur remembers. 

That is to say, they no longer remain. 

It's stunning really; there was a part of L'Manberg untouched by the TNT that was rigged underneath it, but whatever semblance of the place that he knew that could've held on by the thinnest of fraying threads is now cut. The crater is different. Deeper. It isn’t quite the symphony he’d conducted but he expected that change wouldn’t come as easy as pressing a button and dying. He wakes up feeling his insides ripped out, the same thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to that gave way to that infinite sleep (perchance to dream?). Being reduced to nothing more than atom and put back together again, a rebirth more painful than death. And suddenly, there he stands, looking over the untouched rubble.

Crimson vines adorn every inch, trapped within the confines of glass. Like a piece of history being preserved, a do-it-yourself museum. A ghost town in quarantine. No one dare touch what has been for fear of it becoming what will be. Wilbur knows this, he's seen the hands of every player's deck. The only live thing within the glass is a parasite that he knows nothing about, like when fungi infests rotting organisms. Yes, that is alive... And he suppose he's alive too. When _life_ infests rotting organisms. He's always been a bit of an enigma.

It doesn’t matter who walks over the glass: it could be anyone. But those feet tap against the glass, exercising daily chores and doing what’s necessary to get by. No one stops and mourns for L’Manberg anymore: least of all those who fought alongside it for its safety and prosperity. Safety and prosperity mean nothing to what is already dead. There will always be another government. People will move on as they always do: that’s what _humans_ do. Nomadic in nature, moving from place to place. Sometimes with aim, and sometimes with none at all. But things progress.

Yet, he remains. He feels no joy yet he smiles, and it does not reach his eyes as the glass creaks when people walk over it. A time capsule. A reminder to not return to where they are all already headed. ( It's quite funny when he thinks about it, actually. They spend so long running that they forget which direction they go and circle around to where they started. They don't look towards a path, and if they do it's perfectly circular.) Yet they move on, they continue forward, they live their lives.

_Do you ever think of yourself as actually dead, lying in a box with the lid on it?_

The more he thinks about it, _alive_ is such an odd concept. One can die, and die, and die, and die and yet with the yank of a chain they can return to where they swore to never see again. Yet, what _makes_ life? Is it the concept of living? Or, perhaps, is it more difficult than that? To live is to not be alive. To be alive is not to live. One can breathe all they want but when it boils down to feeling: to emotion, if there is nothing to be felt you are living on autopilot.

 _You_ are not alive.

And neither is he... Yet he smiles. It's eerie. It's lifeless. It creeps up out of the corner of his lips menacingly. There is no joy here. And this person: nameless, faceless, looks into the preservation of years past and sees a vague shadow. Assuming someone had fallen in, they inch closer. But when their eyes meet the eyes of the other, they feel their blood turn cold. The battered L’Manberg flag sits at the base, held up by spite and a couple of crimson vines that climb up on the wool. And arms outstretched, smiling, lifeless is former President Wilbur Soot.

_You'd wake up dead for a start and then where would you be? In a box._

He looks different. White streaks start to play at the suggestion of hair that tumbles from a torn, battered and beaten beanie. Every feature looks sunken, the eyes glossy. He has not decayed yet and if he is, Wilbur has been pieced back together to where he looks more like a husk than human. Though, whether or not that's what he looked like before his death is anyone's guess; he'd always been worse for the wear since his mental decline. It seems like everything had changed with him and yet nothing at all; an enigma of a person who is supposed to be dead and yet is alive in a little glass enclosure. Like a fish in a tank. Like an animal in a zoo. Alive and dead at the same time.

_Naturally you’d prefer to be alive. Life in a box is better than no life at all._

Yet, for all intent and purposes, it is still _Wilbur_. That much is recognizable. He still remains; stands among the untouched rubble and smiles lifelessly at the party above. His arms reach into his billowing trenchcoat pockets. He does not move.

And, for a moment, they can hear the gentle hum of a hymn of the republic. A strum of an out-of-tune guitar that no one can see. The singing is distant and out of key; broken from vocal chords that should not work. Something about it seems all the more sinister. A song of hope, now a song of despair. A song of victory now coated in defeat. It is just as dead as the man standing among the rubble. It is just as distant. Just as cold. Yet it continues on, muffled from the glass but somehow clear as day. The person wonders for a second if this is a dream. Yet the music persists. It is fully aware of its irony.

_I heard there **was** as special place... Where men **could** go and emancipate... the brutality and tyranny of their rulers..._

_This place is real you needn't fret: with Wilbur, Tommy, Tubbo, fuck Eret..._

_It's a very big and not blown up L'Manberg..._

_My L’Manberg… My L’Manberg..._

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by my good friend Ravine Onyx PQ Othernames, and the OG tweet can be seen here: https://twitter.com/hauntedravine/status/1367835749232635905! Huge thanks for the bit of inspiration here, my friend! Hope y'all enjoyed!


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